| Yellowstone Bison Slaughter
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| News
Article 3/4/05 |
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| Lousy
enough job without feds
Letter to the Editor, Casper Star-Tribune
3/4/05
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Editor:
The states of Montana and Wyoming seem to be in a horse
race to see who can do the best job of mismanaging elk
and bison. Unfortunately, the Montana House of Representatives'
House Joint Resolution 22, which calls for a federal takeover
of elk and bison management in the Greater Yellowstone
Ecosystem for brucellosis control, threatens to upset
that horse race.
Wyoming, through its elk feedgrounds, has sustained brucellosis
at such a high seroprevalence in elk west of the Continental
Divide that the state has now lost its brucellosis-free
status, with three confirmed outbreaks of brucellosis
in cattle herds west of the Divide within the space of
a year.
Now, to compound the problem of brucellosis in elk, the
state is determined to impose a test and slaughter pilot
project on the Pinedale elk herd, ostensibly to reduce
the herd's brucellosis seroprevalence.
This project is a follow up to the Wyoming Game and Fish
Department's two-decades-long Strain 19 vaccination program
on the elk feedgrounds. Scientific peer review has determined
that the program is invalid due to poor experimental design,
inadequate sampling and serious errors of statistical
analysis.
Expect the same high degree of scientific incompetence
to apply to the test and slaughter project.
In Montana, HJ22 asserts, in a most startling fashion,
that the feds could do a better job of mismanaging bison
than can Montana's Department of Livestock.
I disagree. Montana's DOL has an excellent track record
of mismanaging bison, with its mindless slaughter, puerile
hazing activities, and malicious capture and quarantine
methods. The DOL is right up there with the best.
HJ22 is truly unnecessary, and I hope Montana's Senate
kills it. Neither Montana's DOL with its brutality nor
Wyoming's G&F Department with its incompetence needs
any assistance from the feds in their mutual competition
to see who can completely destroy the wildness of elk
and bison first.
ROBERT HOSKINS, Crowheart
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